1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to improved information processing systems. In particular, the present invention relates to improved information processing systems operating within computer networks. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to methods and systems for sharing data between information processing systems operating within computer networks.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the world of computing evolves toward a distributed topology, computer networks become the vital link between modem computing devices. A computer network can be viewed as a collection of computing devices linked together in such a manner as to allow the sharing of electronic data to benefit a defined user community. Computing devices can include mainframe computers, mini-computers, micro-computers, terminals, and printers. Micro-computers are often referred to in the art as workstations. Workstations are typically self-sufficient computers that possess input, output, and storage devices as well as a processing complex. Modem workstations demand a sophisticated operating system to fully exploit their advanced hardware. Thus, modern workstation operating systems provide many advanced capabilities including a graphical user interface and support for the multitasking of application programs.
Most modem workstation operating systems have a clipboard resource that provides a mechanism for a user to control the sharing of information between application programs running on the same workstation. A clipboard is a special memory resource owned and managed by the operating system. An application program must be specifically written to provide support for the clipboard using clipboard APIs provided by the operating system.
All clipboard enabled applications on a workstation typically share the same clipboard. A clipboard enabled application exposes the clipboard to the end user via three edit operations called "cut","copy", and "paste." Terms such as "cut", "copy", and "paste" are well known and commonly utilized in the art of computer clipboard enabled applications. The "cut" edit operation provides a way for the user of an application program to move selected data from that application program into the clipboard. The "copy" edit operation provides a way for the user of an application program to place a copy of selected data from that application program into the clipboard. The "paste" edit operation provides a way for the user of an application program to place a copy of the contents of the clipboard into that application program. Typically, an operating system implements a clipboard such that data retrieval operations ("paste" edit operation) are nondestructive with respect to the clipboard and data store operations ("cut" and "copy" edit operations) are destructive with respect to the clipboard. The user of a workstation typically uses the operating system provided clipboard as a temporary data storage location within an application program as well as a shared data storage location that can be accessed from different application programs running on that workstation.
A clipboard can be summarized as an operating system provided data storage area that can be manipulated by the user to transfer data within an application program or between application programs on the same workstation. The data involved is selected by the user of an application program on a workstation and can be of many different forms including text, image, and sound. As network based multi-workstation environments become prolific, a user is often confronted with a need to share clipboard information between applications running on different workstations.
Today, a user is presented with a few basic techniques for sharing information between applications running on peer workstations (i.e., workstations included within a computer network); the user can manually recreate the data on the peer workstation, the user can copy the data from the local clipboard and paste it into a mail facility for transport to a peer workstation, or a user can copy the data from the local clipboard and save it into a file on a shared volume that can be accessed by a peer workstation. All of the techniques can be time consuming for the user and the latter two require additional steps to retrieve the data from the mail/file store and update the clipboard on the receiving workstation.
From the foregoing it can be appreciated that a need exists for a method of sharing information that would automatically share data among clipboards of multiple workstations, without the time consuming user operations inherent with present information sharing techniques. From the foregoing it can also be seen that an application program to implement such a method of sharing would greatly benefit application users on networked workstations.